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“I think you tied the hole!” said Abramoff. “We’ll say we tied that one,” I replied, since both of our scores had entered the “too big to keep track of” territory. On to our second hole.

Abramoff said he’s both excited and nervous about re-entering Washington life. He hopes to “educate people about what the world that I was in is” but knows perfectly well he remains a hot potato around town.

“I know there will be a lot of hostility as there already is toward the message I have. There’s a lot of denial,” he said. “People very much wanted it to be just me as the person involved in things that were untoward, and nobody sensible believes that.”

By the time we hit Woodmore’s 17th hole, neither of us had anything to brag about.

“Patrick, I’m catching your disease here,” said Abramoff, referencing my penchant for topping my shots. “I’m lifting my body up. … This is not going well.” That was all before we reached the green, where putting again proved a challenge for Jack.

“Within the 2-foot range is not your sweet spot,” I informed him, but gave him the hole, turning the 18th into a winner-take-all hole.

“My life now is different then my life then,” said Abramoff. “I’ve got other things to focus on. … I have other things to sort of move on to personally. I don’t now how much golf is in my future. And the way I played today, frankly, I don’t think there should be much golf in my future.”

“This is for everything,” said Abramoff as he approached our final hole. His drive on the 18th headed right and into the woods.

“I think I just gave you a two-stroke advantage,” he said, but fortunately for him, mine didn’t fare much better, and both of our stroke counts — yet again — were too high to remember. As Abramoff’s final putt hit the bottom of the hole, we agreed to do our best to forget how poorly we had played and simply call it a tie.

“This is the kind of game that makes you want to not come back and play golf again,” said Abramoff.

Readers' Comments (14)

Patrick Gavin and Alexander Trowbridge, next you talk with racist Abramoff, my expectation is you will ask this racist to apologize for his publicly referring to my peoples as "troglodytes" and "monkeys".

I find this morally repugnant you would boast of spending time with such a loathsome man.

I'm glad Ambramoff came out and spoke about just how much money is involved in politics. Amazing. This is why we must get money out of politics. Both Democrat and Republican. And I challenge anyone to make a case for it.

i hope every judge on the supreme court watched 60 minutes on sunday evening,so they can see how much they corrupted our government with passing lobbying off as petitioning.i wonder how many of them were paid off by lobbyist?

Will somebody tell me what was the point of this piece? The message I got was that golf isn't meant to be played with only one club. But a certain population of people who love to measure their things seem to believe it can be. That includes Patrick Gavin. I suppose his next outing will be to hold a conversation aboard a yacht with a ten-foot hole in the bottom of it.

Wow, this article is shallow and lacks insight into anything. It's not clever, and really, even the golf parts don't ring true- what was the point? - two Gatsby losers pretending to play golf and talking about nothing of substance. Yeah, way to chew up digital space, Patrick.

Jack Abramoff was the poster child, Republican lobbyist hustler along with fellow convicted felon Tom Delay, still at large, and slimeball Grover Norquist, unindicted co-conspirator. They were all part of the big money GOP 's "K St. Project" of GOP-approved lobbyists and influence-peddlers of which Abramoff was the master. He did his time and should tell the public, if he wants to come clean, all about the Republican politicians who he says he "had in his pocket," who were also corrupted with campaign money for influential votes but were never caught.

Democrats have no parallel to the "K St. Project;" the lies and illegal practices of Bush-Cheney; no Reagan Iran-Contra scandal; no Middle East Oil wars like Bush I and II; no parallel to the massive spending, war-profiteering, "bridge-to-nowhere" GOP pork or the two/thirds of the National Debt created under just three GOP presidents: Reagan, (who tripled it), GHW Bush (who added to it), and GW Bush (who more than doubled it yet again), and no parallel to the corrupt Nixon and his equally corrupt administration.